Working with a manual nurse schedule process, the manager of the ward
needs to estimate the right number of nurses that are necessary to work
during each day of the month, from there they can divide these days
into working shifts and staffing demands for each of these shifts. The
manager is also responsible for deciding what kind of nurses need to be
employed and what kind of shifts they should work. Automated Nurse
Schedule can significantly help hospitals overcome the staffing
challenges they face. The challenges include a nurse shortage, a lack of
full-time employee commitments, overruns in labour costs, burnout among
available staff and so on.
Traditional staffing applications used to be very valuable for
healthcare organizations, but now with newer online tools, we are able
to do a better job helping to balance hospitals focusing on staff ’s
needs. Such tools run on a computer system, so they can utilize and
generate data that produce better shifts in a more flexible format.
Healthcare organizations are taking advantage of nurse scheduling tools
that are available in online applications, which can be easily
installed. Once nurses start using these tools other departments often
demand them as they can offer a significant return on investment for the
organization.
Manual Schedule Vs Automated Schedule
A nurse’s main responsibility is to offer special care to all
patients and to provide information about their health while they are in
the hospital or over the phone when it is necessary. Nowadays, nurses
spend a lot of time recording healthcare related documents trying to
improve care co-ordination. Manually designed rosters are time-consuming
and consequently, this brings poor scheduling for staff. Automated
scheduling reduces time and costs included in manual rosters and has the
potential to produce more convenient schedules, thereby improving
contentment and effectiveness of the workforce, and thus staff
retention.
The effectiveness of online nurse scheduling includes better flexibility
than in the past and also an understanding that one size scheduling
does not suit all staff. Nurses need more flexibility and automated
schedules that balance home and work life. Automated schedules can also
lead to improvements in hospital resource efficiency, staff and patient
safety, and administrative workload.
CliniShift Automated Scheduling
CliniShift automated scheduling improves coherence throughout your organization. Clinishift’s enterprise solutions overcome the antiquated manual processes found within the healthcare industry, which reduce costs by streamlining the communication between hospital’s and staff. CliniShift connects the entire hospital from managers, nurses, and doctors.
CliniShift provides a cost-effective solution to enhance productivity and reduce the time required to fill a shift. It increases the manager’s ability to focus on other areas of operations, removing unnecessary communications with staff on a daily basis thus, avoiding tiresome phone calls, text messages and group messaging.
Conclusion
Finally, we conclude that a computer programming-based approach in healthcare rostering is the most successful way to reduce the range of problems involved in daily scheduling. Automated scheduling saves time and reduces costs within the organization.
REF: Sabet, L. (2005) ‘Adopting Online Nurse Scheduling and Staffing Systems’, California Healthcare Foundation, 28 Sep. Available at: https://www.chcf.org/publication/adopting-online-nurse-scheduling-and-staffing-systems/[8 Aug 2018]
